Truman Capote
Cold-blooded betrayal
In an effort to arrest his slide into middle-aged bloat, he attempted a ‘Proustian’ novel, but spilling the secrets of the women he claimed to love was social suicide
High life
It’s nice to be back in London, and Glebe Place is a delight. Mind you, it’s not the mansion I…
The rich are a different species
The scene: a funeral parlour in New York. Doors clang as a family relative, the ‘black sheep’, saunters in halfway…
A letter from Harper Lee
Avoiding publicity doesn’t stop her being sharp-eyed, curious and impeccably well-mannered. I have the evidence
The frog prince
It would not have surprised their friends in the 1930s when Peter Watson had a fling with my grandfather, Robert…
The abundant charms of a playful cupid
Lesley Blanch (1904–2007) will be remembered chiefly for her gloriously extravagant The Wilder Shores of Love, the story of four…
Marx men
Ian Thomson celebrates the anarchic genius of Groucho and his brothers
Elder statesman of the Republic of Letters
Even Spectator book reviewers have to concede that their craft is inferior to the creative travail of authors. Henry James…
A novelist’s view
Do writers really need inspiring landscapes? Or the opposite?
Beyond this, nothing
This may sound a little orientalist, but Tangier has some claim to being the most foreign city in the world.…
